We’ve had the usual ‘it was a mistake, blah blah’ statements from un-named spokesperson. But lets look at the facts. At some point, someone somewhere, made a conscious and deliberate decision that it would be a good idea to remove a historic warship from a scene of London. This isn’t something that you do accidentally – as anyone with design experience knows, doctoring a landscape is not something that ‘just happens’. I could understand some spotty young designer maybe brushing it out, but for it to pass so many levels up until publication without being halted, is pretty alarming.

What we need to think about, wider than the fact that it happened, is the thought process that led to it being acceptable? HMS Belfast has been moored on the Thames for over 40 years now, and has been visited by millions of people. If it wasn’t for the role of HMS Belfast in the war, we would have had plenty more Olympics like those in Berlin in 1936 – ie, a farce. Or football teams having to give the Nazi salute, like the teams who played in the World Cup in Germany in 1938. It’s not just ‘a ship’, it represents all of the ships of the British Royal Navy that have fought in bloody conflicts over hundreds of years.

Is it that military history is not thought appropriate for the Olympics? Well, in that case you can also airbrush out the Tower of London. Oh, and the Tower Hill Merchant Navy Memorial. And can anyone remember the spectacle of the Chinese Army soldiers goose-stepping with the Olympic flag in Beijing in 2008? That was hardly subtle, yet somehow that was overlooked. Don’t expect to see Grenadier Guards at the 2012 opening ceremony, or the Red Arrows flying overhead (although after recent events that might not be possible in any case).

I do wonder if it is down to a modern, lefty kind of school of thought, that would like to try and airbrush wars and anything military out of history. No doubt with the sobriquet that we ‘need to look to the future’. Well, without those who secured our past, there wouldn’t be much of a future to look forward to. I guess its the problem with having elected and appointed leaders with no sense of history.

It’s yet another example of just how blind this country and its institutions can be about our naval heritage. And if we’re that blase about the past, is it any wonder that the Royal Navy is struggling for attention in the present?